Modernizing IT for Agility, Simplicity and Cost Control

The pandemic and current market turmoil have shown the future can be highly unpredictable. To succeed, businesses must prioritize agility and flexibility to pivot quickly and adapt to world events, supply chain dynamics and cyclical business demands. Technology, which drives much of business operations today, must pivot in lockstep to support fluctuating business needs.

This presents a notable challenge for technology. Traditional CapEx technology planning approaches can be inflexible. For example, long planning and approval cycles can delay IT modernization, resulting in prolonged business inefficiencies, higher costs and elevated risks. In addition, CapEx technology purchases require large upfront investments, which can tie up cash and resources that could be used for other business priorities. Additionally, to ensure adequate IT capacity, many businesses must overprovision – at higher monetary and resource costs – to handle spikes in demand and facilitate business growth.

Paving a New Way Forward

Businesses need a new approach. That’s why consumption-based technology, which mitigates these challenges, is in high demand. A recent IDC survey* indicates 61% of organizations worldwide are interested in shifting to a consumption-based model for IT investment.

Flexible consumption models are designed to deliver agility and simpler deployment, and they allow for greater financial control. In turn, these attributes help increase operational efficiencies, drive business growth, are cost-effective and accelerate future scalability. Dell APEX Flex on Demand is a leading pay-per-use consumption solution answering the needs of businesses of all sizes with agility, simplicity and control.

Agility is a key competitive advantage and business resiliency requirement. Dell APEX Flex on Demand allows businesses to move 33% faster to prepare IT for business expansion, according to IDC*. Results like these helped create the case for change at NG Bailey, a leading engineering and services company in the U.K.

Attaining IT Agility

NG Bailey wanted to better align its technology infrastructure to its business needs. Faced with aging IT infrastructure, NG Bailey could not react quickly enough to industry changes and struggled to optimize team productivity and avert rising costs. Its goal was to better serve customers within a highly cyclical and often unpredictable business environment while providing a path for future growth. Working with Dell Technologies and its partner Constor Solutions, NG Bailey chose to proactively modernize its technology using Dell APEX Flex on Demand with Dell Technologies VxRail.

As an engineering company, NG Bailey understands the importance of a strong foundation. While technology underpins its business, the pace and magnitude of market changes are escalating. Thus, attaining technical agility is a top priority. NG Bailey needed flexibility to better navigate the increasingly dynamic building industry and more effectively meet the cyclical needs of the major infrastructure projects and sophisticated customers it serves.

Dell APEX Flex on Demand’s hybrid cloud model provides NG Bailey with on-premises speed, the flexibility of built-in buffer capacity and the ability to spin up virtual machines very quickly. Collectively, the solution helps to manage NG Bailey’s variable needs. “APEX Flex on Demand has revolutionized the way my team works. It stopped us from being reactionary. We can now supply the business with what it needs from an IT infrastructure and support perspective and do so very quickly,” says Stephen Firth, Infrastructure Manager, NG Bailey.

Watch NG Bailey’s two-minute video about its technology-led business transformation.

Controlling Technology Costs

While consumption-based IT increases agility, it simultaneously decreases costs and enables more control with predictable IT monthly spend. For example, Dell APEX Flex on Demand users only pay for the capacity used, including buffer capacity at an 85% billing cap.* IDC estimates* that Dell APEX Flex on Demand saves 39% in annual infrastructure costs with a 34% reduction in required buffer capacity. 

For NG Bailey, Dell APEX Flex on Demand provided much greater cost control.

NG Bailey deployed the solution during the pandemic when capital investments were on hold. By offering the innovative OpEx payment model, the solution enabled NG Bailey to adopt the IT capabilities needed without requiring upfront CapEx expenditures. Additionally, Dell APEX Flex on Demand helped reduce NG Bailey’s data center footprint by 50%, aiding in lower costs and decreased power consumption to support net-zero sustainability strategies.

“We control our costs much more now, we pay for what we use, know how much we’re paying and there are no hidden charges,” says Stephen Firth, Infrastructure Manager, NG Bailey.

Simplifying Infrastructure Management

IDC’s research* indicates Dell APEX Flex on Demand also generates business value through simplicity, generating 37% more efficient IT infrastructure teams and 54% more efficient help desks. Results at NG Bailey are even more significant. Specifically, Dell APEX Flex on Demand helped NG Bailey decrease infrastructure-related support calls by 75% and reduce IT restore time for critical business systems from eight hours to 30 minutes.

“The APEX Flex on Demand for VxRail solution is great because it’s simple, easy to use and it works. The solution is all-in-one stack so we don’t have to manage three elements of hardware. It does its job and requires very little management from us, making upgrades simple and seamless. The solution does exactly what we need it to do,” states Neil Florence, Head of Systems and Infrastructure for NG Bailey.

For NG Bailey, the Dell APEX Flex on Demand solution answered multiple needs and delivered impressive business outcomes.

Source: dell.com